MetaFilter posts tagged with achievmentgaphttp://www.metafilter.com/tags/achievmentgap
Posts tagged with 'achievmentgap' at MetaFilter.Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:03:07 -0800Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:03:07 -0800en-ushttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss60Should summer vacation be abolished?http://www.metafilter.com/130340/Should%2Dsummer%2Dvacation%2Dbe%2Dabolished
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/summer_learning_loss_summer_vacation_hurts_kids_in_school_and_is_especially.html">There are few more cherished nostrums in American life than the importance of equal opportunities. Unfortunately, one of them is the importance of summer vacation...</a> A 2011 RAND literature review concluded that the<a href="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1120.pdf"> average student "loses"</a> about one month's worth of schooling during a typical summer vacation, with the impact disproportionately concentrated among low-income students. "While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer," RAND concluded, "low-income students lose more ground in reading while their higher-income peers may even gain." Most distressingly, the impact is cumulative. Poor kids tend to start school behind their middle-class peers, and then they fall further behind each and every summer, giving teachers and principals essentially no chance of closing the gap during the school year. Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Steffel Olson of Johns Hopkins University have research from Baltimore <a href="http://asr.sagepub.com/content/72/2/167.abstract">indicating that a majority of the achievement gap between high- and low-socioeconomic-status students</a> can be attributed to differences in summer learning loss. Even worse, for many poor kids, subsidized school lunches on which they depend for sustenance <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2010/06/09/7894/as-school-ends-hunger-begins/">essentially vanish</a> during the summer months, leaving them both undertaught and underfed. tag:metafilter.com,2013:site.130340Thu, 25 Jul 2013 13:03:07 -0800bookman117